Saturday, December 2, 2017

Robert Oswald, brother of accused presidential assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, is dead at the age of 83.

Oswald, who passed away on November 27, 2017, was buried in a private ceremony earlier this week. The announcement came yesterday.

Born Robert Edward Lee Oswald in New Orleans, Louisiana, on April 7, 1934 to Robert Edward Lee Oswald, Sr., and Marguerite Frances Claverie, Robert spent his youth in Louisiana with his brothers Lee and John Pic before joining the Marine Corps in 1952 at age 18.

He proudly served his country as a Marine in the Korean War. Upon returning from Korea, he met and married Veda Mercer on November 21, 1956 in Ft. Worth, Texas. He earned his degree in Business Management from Midwestern State University in 1970 and was a member of the Faith Village Church of Christ.

On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, Robert was working as a sales coordinator for Acme Brick in Denton, Texas, when he heard his name called as he passed the receptionist’s desk. She had her radio on. He heard the announcer say his name again, this time repeating the full name – “Lee Harvey Oswald.”

“That’s my kid brother,” he said to the receptionist, stunned.

Thus, began one of the most agonizing chapters of his life – being thrust into the center of one of the greatest national nightmares of the twentieth century.

Robert hadn’t seen his brother for a year and hadn’t heard from him in about eight months when he visited him briefly in the jail visiting room on Saturday, November 23.

“Lee, what the Sam Hill is going on?” he asked his brother, astonished at how completely relaxed he was, as if the events of the previous day had nothing to do with him.

“I don’t know,” Lee answered.

“You don’t know?” Robert replied, disbelieving. “Look, they’ve got your pistol, they’ve got your rifle, they’ve got you charged with shooting the president and a police officer. And you tell me you don’t know? Now, I want to know just what’s going on.”

Robert studied his face, then his eyes, looking for some expression of the truth. Lee realized what his brother wanted.

“Brother, you won’t find anything there,” Lee said.

Robert thought that his brother might tell him the truth. Robert believed he was closer to Lee than anyone else in a lot of ways. But, the man behind the jail room glass was disturbingly machine-like, unnaturally detached from the predicament he found himself in whether innocent or guilty. To Robert, the man in jail was a stranger to him.

When Robert heard that cabdriver William W. Scoggins had told authorities that the man he identified as Lee Harvey Oswald had muttered “poor damn cop” or “poor dumb cop” as he fled the scene of the murder of Dallas police Officer J.D. Tippit, Robert flashed back to an earlier incident.

Robert had been stopped by police after running a traffic light, fearful that a tailgater would have hit him had he stopped quick. The officer was unsympathetic as he listened to Robert’s explanation, and wrote him a citation. Robert’s kid brother, Lee was in the passenger seat. As they pulled away from the curb, Lee looked back over his shoulder and said, “That dumb cop!” The recollection left Robert with a disturbing feeling.

Mr. Oswald had been interviewed many times for various television programs over the years. He often said he believed the findings of most experts that his brother acted alone in killing the president.

“After all these years,” he said, “and we’re talking about a long time, I think more than anything else, if I had an opportunity and had the facts that said Lee was innocent, I would be out there shouting it loud and clear.

“It is my belief, my conviction, no one but Lee was involved - period.

“People need to look at what transpired before [the assassination]. Everything – you’ve got to come all the way from childhood on up and especially that last year of his life, and understand what transpired in his life. He was a lonely boy, needing attention but not getting it.

“[In 1963], he had problems at home, he had problems on his job, he was completely frustrated about what was going on around him. This is not excusing what he did, this is understanding what he did. He wanted to be somebody and this opportunity came about coincidental. Nothing planned. Nothing organized. It happened that way. It’s one of those happenstances of history.”

Robert didn’t believe there was a conspiracy.

“The conspiracy was in the mind of Lee Oswald,” he said.

Shortly after the 2003 broadcast of ABC News’ Peter Jennings Reporting: The Kennedy Assassination – Beyond Conspiracy, Robert Oswald telephoned and told me that had he known ABC was going to air the computer animated sequences I had produced, he would have given up his interview time so that the audience could see more of what I had done.

I was stunned. Stunned and grateful that he had taken the time to look me up and tell me personally how he felt about my work, particularly since it concerned what had to be one of the darkest days of his own life. That telephone call said a lot about his character.

I assured him that the audience needed to hear what he had to say about his brother and thanked him for his call.

“Next time you’re down this way, come by,” he said. “We’ll go out and get a hamburger.”

I could tell he really meant it.
That’s what I thought about when I heard of his passing – may he rest in peace.

He is survived by his wife Vada, daughter Cathy and her husband Dean Barrett, and his son Robert Oswald and wife Linda. He had four grandchildren, Brooke and her husband William Hamilton, David Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett, and Trey Oswald, as well as two great grandchildren, Willa Barrett and Hayden Hamilton.